My season more or less starts for real this weekend. Racing on saturday, next wednesday, next saturday, wednesday after that, and from there it's one after another until october.

I decided to take an "easy" ride yesterday. So I rode my single speed road bike through San Diego's east county for seven hours or so and called it a day. It was easy for two reasons:
1.No power cranks
2. The bike is about 6 lbs lighter
It's harder because it only has one gear! Duh!

But it's a relief all the same because different muscles are being used.  I was back on the PCs for about 3hrs today, hill repeats and what not. My form is really coming around on the cranks pretty quickly and i'm feeling strong again. I need to be very careful not to become overtrained in the coming weeks, which is difficult when the weather is so nice and i'm feeling good.

Training with a heart rate monitor recently will hopefully help me to take some easy days. I was able to hit 180bpm on thursday in my spin class, the highest i've seen it go...I'm going to wear it during my race this weekend for kicks, as i suspect it will sky rocket to over 200.

Since I've resumed training with PCs, my gym time has gone down substantially which is nice from a time management standpoint and although lifting weights is great, it's better to get the same benifits while using all the muscles you know are specifically for pedaling.

Again, I think i'm most impressed with my increase in seated power while riding. My new position on the bike is proving to be quite comfortable and i definitely feel that it's more efficient than my previous position. time will tell.

I'm feeling good on my longer efforts, logging 31hrs in the saddle since tuesday. i've got to keep it low key this week as i don't have a rest day until friday and i want to be recovered by saturday's race.

Wearing the HR monitor tomorrow and trying only to ride the PCs for an hour or less during my 4-5hr ride. We'll see how it goes.